Chip Roundup: AMD's Lisbon Punctuates Q2

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After a rollicking first quarter of 2010 that saw Intel and Advanced Micro Devices introduce major new product lines, chip industry watchers had a bit less to get excited about as the summer months approached. But that’s not to say that there was nothing coming down the silicon pipeline -- so let’s review the major hardware happenings of the past few weeks and how they affect custom system builders.

Lightning-Fast Xeons For February?

Here’s a heads up for builders of whitebox servers -- Intel will bring out a 3.6-GHz, Westmere-class Xeon server chip in February 2011 that could flirt with 4.0GHz without overclocking, courtesy of the chip giant’s built-in Turbo Boost technology, according to an Intel product road map chart obtained by Custom Systems Magazine.

The Xeon X5687 is a 32-nanometer, quad-core processor that is part of a big update to Intel’s Xeon 5600 Series of dual-socket server chips planned for early next year. The X5687 has 12 MB of L3 cache, eight compute threads and draws 130 watts of power.

The coming Xeon 5600 Series release also includes a 3.46-GHz, six-core processor, the Xeon 5690, also with 12 MB of L3 cache and sitting in the 130w thermal envelope.

Capabilities on both chips include Hyper-Threading, AESNI, Intel Virtualization Technology (VT), Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and, of course, Turbo Boost. Based on maximum Turbo Boost frequencies listed for current Xeon 5600 Series chips, a quad-core, 3.6-GHz chip like the Xeon X5687 ought to throttle up a single core to about 3.9GHz when the other three cores aren’t in use, and Intel’s Turbo Boost technology automatically and dynamically gauges that certain thermal conditions are met.

Intel released the first 12 processors in the Xeon 5600 Series in March. Also known by the code-names Gulftown and Westmere EP, the 5600 Series is made up of 32nm processors with as many as six cores and 12 compute threads.

Clock speeds for the current Westmere EP product line top out at 3.46GHz for the quad-core Xeon X5677, currently priced at $1,633, and 3.33GHz for the six-core Xeon X5680, also priced at $1,633 in 1,000-unit quantities. Prices for the Xeon 5600 Series chips planned for February 2011 were not listed on the Intel road map chart obtained by CSM.

NEXT: GPU Computing War Heats Up

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